Category: News

Games for the Weekend is a weekly feature aimed at helping you avoid doing something constructive with your downtime. Each Friday we’ll be recommending a game for Mac, iPhone or iPad that we think is awesome. Here is one cool enough to keep you busy during this weekend.

Repulze ($2.99 Universal) is more than a racing game with insanely fast courses, upgradable hovercraft and challenging obstacles — and those hovercraft are equipped with weapons.  In what plays out as a roller derby style of fighting, you can either race ahead and avoid the fight entirely, or lag behind and take your opponents out one at a time.

There are three different control settings to choose from. The first set of controls are easy enough to understand: tap right to go right and tap left to go left. There is also a tilt-to-steer setting that uses the device’s accelerometer and a back-and-forth slider control that is accessed in the center of the screen. Going right or left is the easy part, what takes a little getting used to is the fast-paced graphics and knowing exactly when and how far to go to the right or to the left in order to maximize your speed potential.

Each course will take a few passes to learn where the obstacles and various power-ups are located. Along the tracks are energy gates that you pass through in order to gain energy during the race.  These energy gates are color-coded indicating their polarity. Your hovercraft switches between red and green energy polarity throughout the race.  When your hovercraft requires red energy, it is important that you avoid the green energy gates. If you happen to hit the wrong color energy gate, your speed will decrease. Hitting three consecutive power gates of the same color earns you a booster. This adds to the challenge of each as achieving some of the more demanding record times requires you to earn every possible booster in the race, without hitting the wrong color power gate even once.

There are three different phases to choose from when you start the game. Phase One is considered the boot camp level. There are nine gravity-defying tracks and six hovercraft to choose from. Here your biggest challenge is to avoid hitting the walls while going as fast as you can. This is a great place to start as you can get familiar with the various hovercraft and get into the groove of the game’s racing style.  In Phase Two the game introduces Wildcard Gates and Toolkits. Wildcard Gates instantly grant you a power booster and change your hovercraft polarity. Toolkits are collected and spent to power up your hovercraft. In Phase Two additional vehicles are on the track as well.  Phase Two is basically an advanced version of Phase One, with new tracks to explore.

Phase Three is where your hovercraft gains weapons and the additional vehicles on the track are hostile. With plasma canons and rocket batteries your hovercraft becomes an instrument of destruction. There are no additional controls to learn as your weapons have an automatic targeting system. You just need to control your hovercraft and keep it steady long enough for the targeting system to lock on to its target.  You are also warned when an enemy hovercraft has you in its sights.  Your screen starts flashing red, alarms go off, and if you don’t respond quickly to the threat, you may get incinerated.

As you win more races, you will increase in rank and earn badges.  Your rank determines which hovercraft you can use and your badges unlock additional tracks.  Each hovercraft is upgradable as well. You spend the Toolkits you collect.  The power ripper power up is the only power-up available in Phase One and Two, as they are not battle courses.  In Phase Three, you have access to the Plasma Canon and Rocket Battery power-ups.

The graphics are extremely smooth for a racing game that moves so fast.  The gravity-defying tracks that the hovercraft races on really add depth to how you approach each track.  Keeping your hovercraft from bumping into the walls while at the same time earning the much-needed energy gates makes each course a real challenge to master.  This weekend is a good time to brush up on your hovercraft skills, and take on the challenge of battling other hovercraft in the futuristic world that is Repulze.

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The Carlyle Group has made a “significant” investment in Addison Lee. Financial terms weren’t announced. Addison Lee is a U.K. taxi company. The investment comes from Carlyle Europe Partners III L.P., a 5.4 billion Euro (US$7 billion) fund that makes mid and large cap investments. Reuters says the investment was in the region of 300 million pounds ($458.8 million).

PRESS RELEASE

Global alternative asset manager The Carlyle Group (NASDAQ: CG) has today announced it has made a significant investment in Addison Lee, a long-established player and well- known brand in the transportation and private hire services in London and the South East of England.

Capital for this investment will come from Carlyle Europe Partners III L.P., a 5.4billion Euro fund that makes mid and large cap investments. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Founded in 1975 with one car, Addison Lee has grown to a fleet of over 4,500 vehicles. Today, Addison Lee has a significant, established footprint in private hire services across London carrying over 10 million passengers and couriering 1 million deliveries per year.

The focus for Carlyle’s investment in Addison Lee will be to drive business expansion both in the UK and internationally by providing transport services to a wider range of blue chip corporates and individual customers. This will be achieved by enhancing customers’ access to the company’s extensive fleet and significant new innovations in the company’s proprietary technology platforms and brand experience.

Andrew Burgess, Managing Director of Carlyle Europe Partners added:

Addison Lee is a strong business and brand with great potential. As experienced investors in the automotive and transportation sector through companies such as Applus+, Hertz and RAC, we hope Carlyle’s experience and expertise will allow us to support the plans to continue growing the business both in the UK and internationally and to create value.
Commenting on the investment, Liam Griffin, Managing Director of Addison Lee said:

We are delighted to welcome Carlyle to the Addison Lee family. From humble beginnings almost 40 years ago, Addison Lee has grown to become a well-known brand, valued for its customer service and innovative technology alike. We are excited about this investment, which provides the endorsement and backing of one of the world’s largest investment firms and provides a platform for Addison Lee’s continued future growth.
Carlyle was advised on the transaction by Deloitte, OC&C and Latham & Watkins. Addison Lee was advised by Catalyst Corporate Finance and Joelson Wilson.

The post Carlyle Invests in Addison Lee appeared first on peHUB.

What appears to be a death photo of Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev has surfaced on reddit.

The extremely graphic and unsettling image comes from user nfieldflyer under the title: “Suspect #1 … in the morgue. NSFW.” It’s actually being hosted on imgur, as is standard for images on reddit.

At one point, it managed to reach the front page of reddit, but appears to have been moved off. Interestingly, as you can see from the following screen cap, reddit was apparently hit with a DDoS attack as well.

The image is still on the site in the WTF subreddit.

Naturally, the authenticity is called into question, and we have no hard confirmation, but TMZ reports: “Law enforcement sources tell TMZ it’s 100% authentic.”

TMZ doesn’t actually show the image, but describes it in a manner that matches the image in question:

Much has been made over the last day or so about reddit’s role in the coverage of the Boston Marathon aftermath, and in journalism in general. Frankly, it has taken a lot of flack, but Matthew Ingram at Paid Content makes some great points about how the mistakes that have come along with reddit’s “coverage” are really no worse than the mistakes made by mainstream media.

In the comments thread of the reddit post for the death photo, others have been working on trying to determine if the photo is real or not. One person, for example, linked to the TMZ article referenced above.

User kyeraider commented, “The ear is dead on,” linking to this photograph of Tsarnaev that has surfaced:

Then, user donwilson contributed this comparison gif:

TMZ reports that officials are trying to find out who leaked the picture, but also reports that the reddit poster indicated it was obtained “by a ‘friend’ who works downtown.”

We’ve not seen this particular explanation. It’s possible that someone posted it before the poster mentioned above.

As you’ve probably read by now, Tamerlan was killed in a shootout with police early in the morning, and his brother Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the second suspect, remains at large.

In related news, a redditor who lives in Watertown did a redddit AMA (Ask Me Anything). Here are some highlights.

YouTube, who has turned its attention to content creators and channels over the past year, is looking to reward them by giving them more real estate on users’ homepages.

Starting next week, logged-in users will see a new look to the homepage. It’ll put more videos from individual channel above the fold, replacing the one-video-per-line current format with one that puts multiple videos on each line.

Currently, here’s what the YouTube homepage looks like for logged-in users. The channels they subscribe to get one video per line in the recent activity stream:

And next week, users will see more videos, side-by-side, on each row on the homepage:

YouTube has also changed how updates from channels are displayed on the homepage. If a user has been watching a bunch of videos from a series, they may see an update telling them to watch the next episode in the series.

Also:

Also, to help someone find the next best thing to watch, we’re looking for patterns in how viewers use YouTube. We know that a lot of fans come back to watch every single video from their favorite channels, regardless of whether those videos were uploaded yesterday or last year. For those most loyal fans, we want to make sure that their favorite channels are always up top so they never miss a beat. And for those fans that watch mainly from their subscriptions, we’ll move their other recommendations further down so they can always see their favorite channels first.

These improvements will rollout next week, and YouTube says that there are more coming “to make the homepage smarter.”

[UPDATE:] Boston police are now searching for a green ’99 Honda sedan with the license plate 116-GC7

[ORIGINAL:]
Authorities in Boston are conducting a door-to-door manhunt for one of the suspects in this week’s Boston Marathon bombings.

Boston police have closed down sections of greater Boston and have urged people in the city to stay indoors. The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority has shut down all of its services. Those who were caught at work when the lockdown began have been urged to use Taxi cabs to return home. The city of Boston is, effectively, closed.

According to a Boston Globe report, authorities including the Massachusetts State Police, the U.S. Secret Service, and the FBI are searching for a suspect using SWAT teams and K9 units.

The manhunt began overnight, after police engaged Dzhokhar Tsarnaev (pictured above) and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who are brothers, in a shootout in Watertown, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston. Tamerlan was killed in the firefight, but Dzhokar managed to escape and is still on the run.

Before the firefight, the suspects are alleged to have killed an MIT police officer named Sean Collier. The men were then reported to have carjacked an SUV at a nearby gas station before heading toward Watertown. Police pursued the suspects, and news outlets have reported that explosives may have been used by the Tsarnaevs during the firefight.

The FBI had released images of the suspects on Thursday afternoon, enlisting the public’s help in finding and identifying them.

The Boston manhunt is still going strong after one of the suspects in last week’s marathon bombing was shot and killed last night. The other suspect, who is still at large, is still in the Boston area with police sweeping through the Watertown area looking for him.

The residents of Watertown, and Boston at large, were encouraged to lock their doors and stay off the streets today. During the downtime, one Redditor who lives in Watertown did a live AMA (Ask Me Anything) of the situation.

Here’s the proof provided that shows he is in the Watertown area:

The top question posed to the redditor, who is going by the handle of kamikazi, describes the situation last night when news first broke out that a cop at MIT had been shot and killed by the suspects. He also described the scene when the shootout began early in the morning as police pursued the suspects near his neighborhood.

“Before I went to bed last night I checked reddit and the MIT shooting was just breaking(like 15 minutes old) I remember thinking. “Maybe it’s the Bombers but more likely probably a mugging gone bad or something”

Woke up sometime between 12:30-1:30(I was groggy so don’t really remember) to what sounded like someone taking out their trash but being an absolutely loud ass douche about it. Lots of banging and rustling. Probably was the shoot out which is 3ish/4ish blocks away.”

Obviously, the people in Watertown could never guess that their community would be the center of national attention. Rabidkamakazi addresses this after a redditor asked him if he was scared or excited about the events around him:

“Both really. I’ve always wondered what it would be like to live in the zone of a mjaor news story. Now I know. It’s both exhilarating and terrifying. Especially because of the bomb aspect. I’ve been running to my windows occasionally to take pictures and I keep thinking. Well what if a bomb denoted now and blew in this window. I’d be pretty fucked.”

He also says that he hopes nobody else dies, including the suspect:

“I’m hoping no one else dies, including the bomber. I want his ass dragged before a judge so he can go to prision and die a slow painful death by shanking, not a fast one from a cops bullet.”

Finally, he says that he already has a plan in place for once everything blows over:

“Call my parents and loved ones. Buy a pack of cigs. Have one. Throw the rest away. then see how I feel about work.”

If you want to know more details from Redditors living in Boston, check out the /r/Boston subreddit. It’s been updated throughout the day with reports people are getting in from every news source imaginable, including pictures from the area.

MyHeritage Ltd has released Family Tree Builder 7.0, a major new version of its free Windows app for recording, managing and sharing a family tree. Version 7’s major new features tighten its links with the MyHeritage.com website by introducing two-way sync and providing access to the billions of historic records held at the website, some free, but most requiring a subscription.

Version 7.0 also implements full Unicode support, tweaks the user interface and extends language support to four additional countries in the Mid and Far East.

Family Tree Builder 7.0’s headline new feature is the implementation of two-way sync. Previously users could upload their tree to the MyHeritage.com servers — free account holders are limited to 250 individuals in their tree — but version 7.0 now makes it possible to download trees and tree changes back to the program, allowing users to update their tree using a combination of the website, Windows app and iOS app. All changes are then shared across the different builds when the user next performs a sync.

Practically all information is synced from the app, with the notable exceptions being DNA markers, SSN fields and any fields specifically marked as “private”.

Version 7.0 also replaces the existing Smart Research and WorldVitalRecords Search tools with Record Matching and SuperSearch tools. Both are linked to MyHeritage.com’s growing list of records, numbered in the billions, with the Record Matching tool performing background smart searches based on the information held in the user’s tree. A clickable button next to individuals alerts users to the existence of potential matches.

The new build has also been rewritten to support Unicode, which ensures that data can be entered in any language, allowing for a mix and match between languages in the program. This has led to a new file extension, UZED, being implemented to reflect Unicode projects.

Other changes include a minor facelift of the program interface, plus support for Chinese (both Traditional and Simplified), Japanese, Korean and Farsi languages. Replacing existing personal photos in the tree has been simplified, while support for BCE dates and options to display the husband/father’s first name or initial in his children’s or wife’s name have also been added. The update is rounded off with the usual non-specified bug fixes.

Family Tree Builder 7.0 is available now as a free download for PCs running Windows XP or later. Users will need to sign up with MyHeritage.com to use the program — free accounts are available, with paid-for premium versions extending the program’s functionality as well as providing more storage space online.

Microsoft’s gaming console has remained the best-selling system in the United States for the 27th consecutive month, according to new data from NPD Group. The Xbox 360 sold 261,000 units in the U.S. in March, beating out Sony’s PlayStation 3 and Nintendo’s Wii U. As a whole, physical sales were down 10% year-over-year from $1.1 billion in March 2012 to $992.5 million in March 2013. Software sales remained almost flat at $554.8 million, only inching down just 1% from a year ago. The steepest decline came from hardware sales, which dropped a whopping 32% to $221.6 million. Portable consoles are said to have experienced a “stronger decline” than traditional ones, however sales of the Nintendo 3DS grew an estimated 9% year-over-year.

The HTC One flagship phone is officially available in the U.S., with two carriers selling the handset on Friday. AT&T and Sprint both have the One in stores while T-Mobile announced web orders now and in-store availability on April 24. Unfortunately for the most passionate HTC One fans who ordered the unlocked developer edition for $649, those orders are now delayed.

I see this as another small mis-step for HTC and it’s not the first as it pertains to the HTC One; a very important phone to help the company turn around a string of slowing sales and revenues. Last month, the company had to push the phone’s launch back due to component shortages. Instead of the phone arriving in mid-to late-March as planned, we’re now past the middle of April. That’s potentially bad as Samsung’s Galaxy S 4 — a competing flagship phone — is due in customer’s hands within the next two weeks.

As far as the developer edition handset, customers were told to expect their phone by April 19, which is today. Instead of receiving the phone, however, those who ordered got an email from HTC saying the units were delayed and should be in hand by the end of the month. Clearly, HTC knew the phones wouldn’t be arriving on time prior to today.

As I’ve always said, “Good news doesn’t get better with age.” It’s a shame that notifications went out on the day the HTC One developer edition was slated for delivery. And making it worse: The people who would pay $649 for an unlocked HTC One with 64 GB of internal storage are likely the most vocal enthusiasts. These folks could have quickly spread the word on how good the HTC One is; something that the company could use since it doesn’t have the marketing budget of a Samsung or an Apple.

If you’re in the mainstream consumer camp and want an HTC One, however, you can still get one today.

AT&T is offering a 32 GB version for $199 with contract ($599 without) or a carrier exclusive 64 GB model for $299 with contract ($649 without). Sprint stores have a 32 GB model for $199 with contract ($549 without) but you can save $100 by porting your number to Sprint from another carrier.

T-Mobile doesn’t have the HTC One in stores yet, but you can order one online today for $99 down and 24 monthly payments of $20 each. In the case of the payment plan T-Mobile drops the $20 monthly hardware charge once the phone is paid off.

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A video from the Associated Press featuring a circus acrobat surviving an 85-foot fall is gaining viral steam, as more and more blogs are showing it.

The fall apparently happened last month at a circus in Moscow. He hit the safety net, which was waiting directly below the stunt, but unfortunately he fell right through it. Somehow, he still managed to live. He reportedly suffered a fractured vertebra.

According to the AP’s YouTube description for the video, the Kenyan trapeze artist is healing and is expected to turn to work.

If LinkedIn has become the quiet success of the major social web companies, LinkedIn’s Recruiter page is the quiet success — and cash machine – within the company. And a brand new feature shows how the company is turning your professional data into a gold mine for recruiters.

LinkedIn’s “talent solutions” service, which gives recruiters and hiring managers the ability to post job ads and hunt for candidates, is the fastest-growing and most profitable portion of LinkedIn’s business. The talent solutions homepage saw an update last week that involved several design changes, but it was the addition of the “People You Might Want to Hire” tool that’s sheds the most light on how LinkedIn makes money.

At this point, most professional people are at least aware of LinkedIn, and with the company boasting 200 million registered users, a good number of people now have profile pages listing their work experience and other relevant information on the social networking site. But the consumer-facing side of LinkedIn that you might see is not the portion of the company that brings in the most revenue — or, at least not directly.

The talent solutions portion of LinkedIn brought in 53 percent of the company’s revenue last quarter. The basic service allows corporate recruiters and human resources employeees can to post job ads for the company, search for relevant candidates, track responses, and monitor people they might like to hire (yes, a recruiter can put an alert on your profile and know when you make updates or switch jobs.) Companies pay for access to those recruiting features, and the more accurate the data LinkedIn can provide, the more value the companies will derive from the service.

The new feature on the Recruiter page is an intelligent recommendation engine that suggests to recruiters people they might want to hire. It sounds simple enough, and with similar features all over sites like Facebook and Twitter, maybe not so novel. But the feature is huge for LinkedIn on the consumer side already, where the company reports that 50 percent of job seeker engagement comes from the recommended jobs tool, with the other 50 percent coming from people typing into the search bar. Users who are actively looking for jobs might be willing to put in search terms. But people who aren’t actively looking to switch jobs — which LinkedIn estimates is about 80 percent of the current workforce —  are far less likely to search.

“Recommendations have fundamentally changed the trajectory of Linkedin.com,” said Parker Barrile, head of product for talent solutions, in an interview this week. “The recommendations technology that suggests things for members totally change the game. Because we’ve realized how important it is not to expect consumers to actively search for things.”

My colleague Derrick Harris recently wrote about the engineering shift at LinkedIn over the past five years that now allows the company to put significant resources behind engineering projects like recommendations, and Barrile said that refining and perfecting the suggestions has become critically important.

“We’ve invested a lot into the technology that works on those recommendations,” he said. “All of these recommendation technologies learn from the way users interact with them. And LinkedIn’s recommendation technologies have become especiallly responsive because they’re so important to the business.”

The “People You Might Want To Hire” tool takes into account past behavior on the part of the recruiter, as well as data signals from within the job ad, to put together a list of candidates who might be a fit based on a variety of signals. For instance, let’s say you’re an tech company looking to hire for a PR position. The tool won’t just surface people working in technology PR. Instead, it might surface people working in technology who list writing and editing as their skills, or have a number of endorsements for communication or working with a team. Or, let’s say you’re hiring for a venture capital position in San Francisco — the system might also suggest relevant candidates from New York, since it knows people in venture capital are likely to move between the two cities.

Potentially creepy if you start getting a lot of messages from recruiters asking you to move to New York? Maybe. But for people who end up with job offers out of the process, there’s a strong upside to that technology.

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Ionic Security Inc. said it raised a $9.4 million Series A investment in a deal led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, joined by TechOperators and including existing investors such as Ken Levine and Paul Judge. The company said that Kleiner Perkins General Partner Ted Schlein and TechOperators Partner Tom Noonan will join the board.

PRESS RELEASE

Ionic Security Closes Nearly $9.5M Series A-1 Investment

Funding led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers with TechOperators, to expand the industry’s first unified cloud and mobility security platform; grow sales and engineering teams

ATLANTA, April 19, 2013 /PRNewswire/ – Ionic Security Inc., delivering the first unified cloud and mobility security platform for the enterprise, today announced the close of $9.4m Series A-1 investment round. Led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB), the round also included Atlanta-based TechOperators and increased participation by early investors such as famed security entrepreneurs Ken Levine and Dr. Paul Judge. The capital will be used to expand Ionic’s engineering team, accelerate enterprise sales and increase awareness of its Fusion platform. Ionic Security also announced that Ted Schlein, general partner at KPCB, and Tom Noonan, partner at TechOperators, will join the board of directors.

“Enterprises want to take advantage of the reduced costs and increased usability of cloud and mobile applications, but hesitate due to security concerns,” said Steve Abbott, Ionic Security CEO. “Our Fusion platform provides the security controls executives need to approve cloud migrations, especially in regulated environments. Customers see lower costs, higher employee satisfaction and increased security.”

Founded in 2011, Ionic Security (formerly Social Fortress) combines identity and access management, data-centric policy enforcement and comprehensive usage auditing to provide enterprises with an unprecedented level of control of their data without the need for, or use of, gateways. Administrating Ionic Security’s Fusion platform is done through simple dashboards, tablet-oriented UI and a powerful correlation and policy engine while end-users see no change to their workflows.

“Security needs to change with the times,” said Ted Schlein, general partner of KPCB. “Enterprises have historically secured their data through network security, endpoint protections and central identity management offerings that are no match for the complex security challenges inherent in the combination of cloud services and the rise of bring-your-own-device policies. Ionic Security addresses this challenge head-on by providing enablement, not restriction and is poised to become standard in next-generation enterprise IT infrastructure.”

Companies of different sizes are required to control and secure their data as well as their partners’ data. Currently piloting its “Fusion” enterprise data security platform, Ionic Security has seen tremendous interest in its unified approach to data security and is working with progressive industry leaders in the financial services, healthcare, pharmaceutical, insurance, aerospace and federal markets in North America and Europe.

“Ionic Security fits perfectly with TechOperators’ focus: investing in great teams solving hard problems at the intersection of cloud, mobility and analytics,” said Tom Noonan, former CEO of Internet Security Systems and partner at TechOperators. “The Fusion platform has the opportunity to massively disrupt the IT security market, as many incumbents continue to focus on outdated assumptions about enterprise infrastructures. Today’s new reality requires new thinking about data security – and that’s exactly what Ionic Security brings.”

“Ted and Tom bring unparalleled experience to our board,” said Adam Ghetti, Ionic Security founder, CTO and chairman. “Their advice and guidance will be invaluable as we scale quickly and broaden our reach to address the critical data security challenges facing enterprises today.”

About Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB)

Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB) has backed entrepreneurs in more than 700 ventures leading to nearly 200 IPOs, over 375,000 jobs and a deep strategic network. The firm has helped build pioneering companies like Align, Amazon, Electronic Arts, Genentech, Genomic Health, Google, Intuit, Juniper Networks, Netscape, Symantec, VeriSign and WebMD. KPCB partners serve on the boards of Amazon, Apple, Bloom Energy, Flipboard, Foundation Medicine, Google, Hewlett-Packard, Nest, Square, Tesaro and Zynga, among others. KPCB accelerates the success of entrepreneurs with a team of partners delivering company-building services including strategy, operational scaling, recruiting, business development, product delivery and marketing communications. The firm invests in all stages from seed and incubation to growth companies. KPCB operates from offices in Menlo Park, San Francisco, Shanghai and Beijing.http://www.kpcb.com

About TechOperators

An early-stage venture capital firm, TechOperators was founded on the premise that proven operators make the best partners for technology entrepreneurs. Based in Atlanta, Georgia, the firm is led by an expert team of partners with decades of hard-fought operating success and experience founding, building and running world-class venture backed software companies. Extending beyond mentoring, TechOperators applies market-proven strategic and operational experience to drive growth during all stages of company building. TechOperators seeks entrepreneurs with bold innovative software solutions in cloud computing, cyber security, mobile computing, and marketing. For more information visit www.techoperators.com.

About Ionic Security

Ionic Security (formerly Social Fortress) enables the use of cloud services by protecting sensitive data anywhere it travels and wherever it resides, whether on the corporate network, in the cloud or on mobile devices. The first unified data security platform of its kind, Ionic Security takes a comprehensive approach to securing data in today’s borderless enterprise by providing access control, intellectual property monitoring, data encryption and policy management, without proxies or gateways or changes in user behavior. The company is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, and is backed by leading venture firms such as Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, TechOperators and ff VC as well as industry experts Christopher Klaus, Ken Levine, Phil Dunkelberger and Dr. Paul Judge. More information is located atwww.ionicsecurity.com.

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Graphene! It’s the wonder stuff: the thinnest, stiffest, strongest and most impermeable material known to humanity, as well as the best thermal and electrical conductor. What’s more, a company called Graphene Technologies has figured out how to more-or-less pluck the stuff out of thin air – the firm has a scalable, patented technique for creating very pure graphene out of carbon dioxide.

So why does Graphene Technologies CEO John Myers sound so downbeat about the atom-thick carbon lattice?

Speaking at Graphene Live in Berlin — co-located with the Printed Electronics Europe 2013 event — Myers pretty much asked the crowd of attendees whether any of them had any idea what to do with the stuff:

“I’m skeptical about the market I’m in now. There’s a lot of enthusiasm, but also a lot of confusion. The problem is there isn’t a market of any significant size for graphene.

“We all do ourselves a disservice with our inarticulate, self-congratulatory posturing. The fact is there isn’t a killer app yet and there’s no reason to think there will be, except there’s a lot of [effort] and money being thrown at it, and the material does appear to have a lot of potential.”

That potential is a big reason for the hype around graphene (which, we should bear in mind, was only manufactured for the first time less than a decade ago). Because of graphene’s properties, many see it as a possible successor to silicon — a material whose own computing-friendly properties will break down if we miniaturize it much more than we already do.

The problem there is that graphene doesn’t have an intrinsic band gap, making it tricky to use in transistors — simply put, you can’t turn a pure graphene transistor off. This may yet be fixed through clever doping (coating) techniques, but we still don’t know for sure whether that can be done while retaining graphene’s advantages.

What about touchscreens? Graphene is transparent and highly conductive, so in that regard it could be a great rival to the frequently-used indium-tin-oxide (ITO) as a conductive coating – and it’s more flexible, too. However, as IDTechEx analyst Khasha Ghaffarzadeh pointed out, graphene doesn’t significantly outperform ITO. It also has serious rivals on the flexibility front, chiefly from carbon nanotubes. Then there’s the fact that while there are concerns over the future supply of indium, an ever-increasing amount of the rare metal is being retrieved through recycling.

Graphene is also touted as a replacement for activated carbon in the electrodes of supercapacitors, which are used in electric car batteries, for example. But, Ghaffarzadeh said, “it is again trying to replace a material that is well-known and low-cost.” And as a replacement for graphite (the source of graphene, of course) in carbon fiber? Ditto. How about for use in conductive inks? Again, carbon pastes are the rival, and they’re pretty cheap too.

As Ghaffarzadeh said:

“The potential is enormous, but it’s trying to do things that already exist, only a little bit better and a bit cheaper. We need new concepts that graphene alone is enabling: new platforms.”

Myers noted that we are “more than likely going to end up with a range of carbon nano-products, each of which will have a range of interesting features and uses.” Regarding graphene, he added that he hates competing on price, and doesn’t want to “go into a market where the value proposition is that I’m cheaper than the other guy.”

“I would urge everyone in the field to think about the process opportunity,” Myers said. “There’s no practical limit to the amount of this material that can be made. That means that, in the bulk world, graphene is going to be a commodity. As a business, you have to think about what kind of value you can create with the material, because you’re not going to make any money producing it.”

To that end, he added, Graphene Technologies has joined the brand new Graphene Stakeholders Association, which opened its doors on Thursday. There, he suggested, various players in the nascent scene can educate each other and collaborate.

And, hopefully, find the killer app for this wondrous substance.

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Just a couple weeks ago Google started pushing out an update to the Google Play Store taking it to version 4.0. The major update brought an overhauled UI that incorporates a Holo-esque, Google Now look. Since then Google has been addressing some bugs and other minor issues and this latest revision, taking the app up to version 4.0.26, is no different. The update has started rolling out to users, but if you are too impatient for that, you can download the apk using the link below.

Google Play Store 4.0.26 Download

source: OMG!Droid

Come comment on this article: Google Play Store receives very minor update, starts rolling out to users

What you are about to witness is a first person view of a police pursuit as seen through the eyes of a motorcycle officer. The chase started when Police Motor Officer Troy Gurley spotted 24 year-old Justin O. Sanders speeding by him in a Mazda3. Officer Gurley proceeded to pursue Mr. Sanders on his bike and at times, the pursuit got downright scary. Remember, Officer Gurley is on a motorcycle which means no doors, airbags or external protection of any kind, something that made him very vulnerable to not only the speeding car, but other traffic as well. Generally when we see police chases they’re viewed from dash mounted cameras, however in this case, seeing it through a helmet cam gives this chase an entirely different look and feel.

Source: Autoblog.com

Anyone who wonders why Google has poured so many resources into Android, Google Fiber and Motorola should understand that the company doesn’t plan to make money by selling smartphones or by being an ISP. Instead, Google’s game plan is to boost traffic to its hugely profitable websites and raise the rates that it can charge advertisers. A new chart from Asymco’s Horace Dediu, posted below, shows that Google websites such as YouTube, Google Maps and plain old search remain as vital as ever to Google’s success as a company, with both its websites and network websites combining for more than $10 billion in revenues.

Continue reading…

TracFone, the country’s largest prepaid virtual operator, managed to outdo its impressive holiday performance in the usually tepid first quarter. It added 839,000 new subscribers to its total, more than the 753,000 it added in the fourth quarter and 127 percent more than its 369,000 net additions in last year’s Q1. TracFone even beat out mobile giant Verizon Wireless, which grew by 720,000 new subscribers last quarter.

Why the big boost? América Móvil, the Latin America multinational telecom provider that owns TracFone, didn’t give specifics. But it just so happens that in January TracFone started selling the iPhone 5 at Walmart through its Straight Talk brand.

The offer presents a cheap alternative for consumers craving Apple’s latest and greatest device. You still have to pay the unsubsidized iPhone 5 price of $649, but Walmart spreads it out over 26 monthly payments of $25. Meanwhile Straight Talk’s prepaid service comes in at just $45 a month, including unlimited SMS, voice and data, though Straight Talk will start throttling back speeds if you consume much more than 2 GB each month.

That plan is even cheaper than T-Mobile’s new “Un-carrier” $50 tier while also offering more data. The major drawback is that you  don’t get 4G access.  As a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO), TracFone buys network access from the major carriers. The iPhone deal uses either Sprint or Verizon Wireless’s CDMA networks, but so far Tracfone hasn’t gotten permission from either to use their LTE services, which can deliver data speeds up ten times faster than their older 3G EV-DO systems.

In its earnings statement (PDF), América Móvil said that its big subscriber gains are coming from Straight Talk and its new brand targeting Mexican nationals Telcel América. Both brands offer more expensive plans than Tracfone’s core prepaid service focused on budget users. Consequently, its average revenue per subscriber jumped 16 percent year over year to $19 a month.

There’s no way to know for certain whether the iPhone is driving those Straight Talk gains unless Tracfone starts releasing device figures. But more of the prepaid operators’ customers seem to be gravitating toward higher-end devices like the iPhone and purchasing more expensive service plans.

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NOTE: This week’s episode of the GigaOM Weekly News Wrap-Up was recorded on the morning of Thursday, April 18, prior to the heavy police activity that followed later that night.

On this week’s show, we look at the media landscape in the aftermath of the Boston terror attack. How does social media help — or hurt — following a news event? Then we dive even further into the media waters with the big takeaways from our paidContent Live conference and wrap up with the news of Twitter’s new music app.

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SHOW NOTES:
HOSTS: Chris Albrecht and Tom Krazit
GUEST: Mathew Ingram

What were the roles of social media and big data in the Boston Marathon bombing this week?

The big debate over branded content and other takeaways from paidContent Live.

Will Twitter’s new #Music app sound sweet?

OTHER GIGAOM PODCASTS:

The Chrome Show:
Introducing the GigaOM Chrome Show

Internet of Things Podcast:
How the Internet of Things may make parents less worried by more neurotic

Podcast: Shark Week for the internet of things

What the Internet of Things can learn from Minecraft and Lemmings

Podcast: How IBM uses chaos theory, data and the internet of things to fix traffic

Electric Imp aims to make the Internet of Things devilishly simple

IoT podcast: When devices can talk, will they conspire against you?

What the internet of things can learn from Minecraft and Lemmings

Podcast: Why the internet of things is cool and how Mobiplug is helping make it happen

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• Examining the rise of crowd labor platforms in 2012
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• Listening platforms: finding the value in social media data

 

You remember that mysterious HTC smartphone we have been talking about lately? You know— the one that’s supposed to be a prettier version of the One smartphone? Well it appears that we are finally getting more concrete details about the device… and boy is this mysterious toy shaping up to be a real beauty. According to the serial (but mildly inconsistent) leaker DigiTimes, the M4 is not only going to be a revision of the existing One smartphone, but it will be made out of a metal-alloy chassis produced by Catcher Technology— all in the hopes of avoiding a supply issue kind of like what we saw with the One.

While the One smartphone will likely sell like hotcakes, HTC expects its M4  to sell well regardless. Additional reports are indicating that HTC is expected to start shipments in June, with around 700,000 devices aiming to arrive in the second quarter.

source: DigiTimes

Come comment on this article: HTC M4 expected to feature full metal chassis and arrive June